There is a new date and
time for the VSS AGM. The AGM will be held Sat, 25 Mar, 10am-12noon.
The venue remains the same: Bestway Building ,
12 Prince Edward Rd, #06-01 ,
Podium A. Everyone is welcome, but only members can vote. No memberships will
be sold at the door. Light snacks will be served, and we hope to screen some
videos.

Mon, 20 Mar is the first
day of Spring in the northern hemisphere and the day
the people in many countries are celebrating Meatout Day (www.meatout.org). In
Singapore , we’re going to
have our Singapore Meatout Week later in the year, probably July.

However, we do want to do
something on 20 Mar to connect with people in other countries. So, we’re
going to have a “Take a Meat Eater for a Meal” day. In other words,
on that day (or some day near then), vegetarians take a meat eating friend,
family member or colleague for a veg meal. This could
be eating out or a home-cooked meal. Give it a try, and let us know how it
goes: info@....

The
first session of the VSS Wellness Seminar Series in 2006 takes place Thur, 9 Mar, 8pm-9.30pm. The topic is Why Raw?with Julia Jus, a raw food chef who lives in Chiang Mai and
speaks English well: http://www.juliajus.com/about_julia.html.
A VSS member who uses a raw food diet was very impressed by a session Julia did
on her last visit to Singapore .

Registration is now open
for the World Vegetarian Congress to be held 6-10 Sep06 in Goa . Find out about the Congress programme,
post-Congress tours, hotels, and more at http://www.ivu.org/congress/2006.
The Congress is only held every two years, and who knows when it will next be
in Asia .

Environmental Challenge
Organization ( Singapore )
has asked VSS to look for youth who might like to participate in the 14th
session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-14). It's happening
1-12 May 2006. Too many people still don’t know about the connection
between meat production and ecological destruction. Go to
New York and help educate people: http://www.shoutsingapore.org/singapore_youth_for_csd14

Genesis Health Food
Restaurant, 1 LorongTelok,
will be holding the same vegetarian cooking class on 4 consecutive evenings,
March 20, 21, 22 and 23, from 6pm-7.30pm. Featured dishes include granola,
waffles and savoury rice. Additionally, there will be health talks by a
registered dietician and a registered nutritionist.

Last,
but not least, you can sample the food prepared during the class and enjoy a
light meal. Each class costs $50. For details, call 6438-7118 or emailgenesishf@....
Please register in advance.

VSS sometimes receives
inquiries about whether a particular product contains ingredients derived from
our fellow animals. Since we vegetarians don’t
eat meat, should we also avoid any product that involves the suffering of other
animals? Is it possible to be 100% pure? Is making the effort productive? Here
is one view: http://www.veganoutreach.org/howvegan.html.
What do you think?

The following article gives
background on the idea of growing meat in a laboratory, an idea that apparently
emerged in the 1930s from different sources, including Winston Churchill.
Don’t expect to see such meat in the stores any time soon. Would you eat
such meat? Vegetarians vary in their view: http://satyamag.com/sept05/hawthorne.html

Young kids seem to have a
special affinity for dinosaurs (for example, the purple one named Barney). So,
if you want to convince them that they can grow big and strong on a veg diet, tell them about that the world’s biggest
dinosaurs were vegetarians who were much bigger than any of their carnivorous
cousins. According to the following article, Argentinasaurus weighed an incredible 100 tons and was 120 feet long.http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060301/sc_space/thebiggestcarnivoredinosaurhistoryrewritten